


Just Kidding

by TK_DuVeraun



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Azure Moon Spoilers, Blue Lions Route spoilers, Friends to Lovers, M/M, apparently I'm Sylvix trash now, jk idiots to lovers, referenced domestic abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-07
Updated: 2019-09-07
Packaged: 2020-10-11 18:30:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20550740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TK_DuVeraun/pseuds/TK_DuVeraun
Summary: "Why would you tell me this?""Because no one will ever believe you."Blue Lions/Azure Moon spoilers.





	Just Kidding

The problem with Felix was- Okay,_ one_ of the problems with Felix was- Hey, I’m getting to a point here, stop interrupting. One of the many problems with Felix was that he was equally the funniest person Sylvain knew and the person thought of as the least funny person in existence. 

He very clearly remembers telling Byleth, with gestures, so she’d believe him, that, “Felix handed me a ladder… And then told me to get off his back.”

Byleth had tilted her head - it was eight months into the school year and she’d gotten better at showing her emotions - and said, as deadpan as Felix had been for joke, “He must have seen you trying to get something off a tall shelf.”

The bottom line was, no one believed Sylvain when he told them Felix was making fun of him.

“I won’t say you have a persecution complex,” Ingrid said, “though you do, but Felix is completely serious. That’s his thing. Glenn was a sarcastic jerk with a heart of gold. Felix is just, well, bluntly rude.”

Sylvain protested and tried, again, to explain that Felix was actually quite good with Black Magic and the electric shock that made his red hair stand on end had been completely intentional, but she wasn’t having any of it. When Ingrid stalked off in disgust, he was frustrated enough that he didn’t even go into town to flirt with pretty girls. He sulked in his room, a book on Black Magic propped up on his lap. The only thing for it was retaliation, even if he struggled to think of how he could use his talents with fire for a harmless prank. Maybe a haircut? He fell asleep with the conversation and plots still swirling around in his head. 

No one ever compared him to Miklan, his sleep-muddled brain muttered between dreams. Yeah, he was older than the others and Miklan older still, so they didn’t know Miklan the way they knew Glenn. And Miklan was unashamedly awful, even before he was disowned. Generally, it was bad form to compare a guy to someone who’d dumped him in a well and left him for dead.

There was something about the well incident that made it easy to talk about. If he was opening up about his family, which, okay, was a rare occurrence, the well was his go-to. It had been terrible. He was still claustrophobic on bad days. Still choked every time he drank well water. (Thankfully Garreg Mach had plenty of milk and juice for the students.) 

Sylvain would have thought it’d be easier to talk about other things. Like the thing he never talked about. The thing no one else knew. It was hard to form the words, even in the silence and privacy of his mind. When Miklan had caught him sneaking his laundry to the washing room before the sun was even up. When Miklan had looked between his red face and balled up sheets and smirked. When he’d said, “Congratulations, little brat. You’re officially as useful as you will ever be.”

It was just a few words and the goddess certainly knew that everyone called him useless at least once a week, but for some reason the event shied away from his waking mind and hid behind damp well-walls.

“You know, Felix,” he said the next day. It was late afternoon and he was in the training hall for one reason and one reason alone and it wasn’t training. No, the training was a terrible downside to his attempt at subtlety. “Hey, that doesn’t count as a point, I was talking.”

“Maybe you should shut up.”

Sylvain crossed his lance with Felix’s sword twice more before he got back to his point. “You know, Felix. You’re not like anyone else. No one in the world could possibly compare to your boring disinterest toward and for girls. It’s almost impressive, really.”

There, he’d done it. “People shouldn’t compare you to your brother” in words that wouldn’t bring up his defensive hackles.

“You’re an idiot,” Felix replied, but there was something in his sword swings. A thoughtfulness that did nothing to make them easier to parry. Not that parrying a sword with a lance was a particularly sound strategy to begin with, but the point of his trip to the training grounds had nothing to do with training, remember?

When Sylvain later fell dramatically to the ground in feigned, completely feigned, exhaustion, Felix stood over him.

“That’s why I do it.”

Okay, that was another problem with Felix. He would continue conversations he had in his head aloud and simply expect the other person to keep up and figure out the context. And if they didn’t, and Sylvain never did, he huffed, scoffed and walked off.

Sylvain spun his lance in his hands, still on the ground, and tried to make sense of the latest non-sequitur. 

Three days later, waking up from a nightmare of clutching soft linens and wishing to melt into old, stone tiles, he woke with a gasp. It hadn’t been his own fault this time, not understanding Felix’s comment. Felix had, for once, given him too much credit. Felix had imagined Sylvain grumbling at muttering at him that ‘No one ever believes me when I tell them you’re funny.’

Felix messed with him precisely because no one would believe it. Jerk.

—

Five years was a long time to wait for any follow up. Not that Sylvain had expected any. There wasn’t much to joke about. There might have been an upturn when Dimitri pulled his head out of his ass, but it had come at the cost of Felix’s father. Felix loved him, Sylvain knew. Hating their parents was a privilege Sylvain carried alone, no matter how many suitors Count Galatea threw Ingrid’s way. Felix’s love for his father was obvious in how angry he made him, in how badly, deeply Felix wanted an apology for a single, careless comment nine years old.

Sylvain stood at Felix’s right shoulder over the best grave they could give the late duke and heard the quiet, “I forgive you.”

Was this another event no one would ever believe? Another set up? No. Sylvain knew it wasn’t and didn’t question his certainty. It couldn’t be a set up because Sylvain would never tell another soul about the private moment he was allowed to witness. Until he heard the whispered words, he might have doubted that he carried Felix’s complete trust, but there was no mistaking it behind the highly inadequate grave.

So Sylvain did the only thing he could. He said the words Rodrigue should have said so many years ago. “He didn’t deserve to die like that. There should have been another way.”

Felix reached over his shoulder for his hand and when he had it, he squeezed Sylvain’s fingers so tightly that his knuckles popped.

—

In the camp outside Enbarr, outside the final battle, Sylvain hoped, they sat together with their fingers touching through layers of leather and metal. A thick, tense atmosphere lingered throughout the entire camp, but to Sylvain it felt like they sat in a pocket of a different, shakier, more anxious fog. Maybe it was the tremble in his heart, the way it screamed and clawed at his ribs for him to grab Felix and kiss him now while they still had the chance.

He didn’t start at the sudden turn of his thoughts. After all, it wasn’t really sudden when he’d been circling around the feelings for years. It was just like him and his useless brain and heart to realize how he felt on what was potentially their last day alive.

(It didn’t occur to him that most of the war had been potentially their last day alive, but if it had, he would have discarded the thought because he was a romantic at heart.)

Then Felix did the thing. The particular tilt of his head, the exact softness of emotion around his eyes, the pull at the corner of his mouth as if he wanted to smile, but chose not to because he liked to make himself suffer needlessly.

It wasn’t the time for jokes. Or maybe it was the best, the only time for jokes. Sylvain picked up his hand and put it fully on top of Felix’s. He braced himself.

“I don’t know how to make the others believe it.”

Okay, it was the _other_ thing. The thing where Felix was having a conversation with the Sylvain in his head, who was always more clever than the one holding his hand and maybe he should take it as a compliment, but he was mostly focused on the knots his stomach had turned into. 

“Believe what?” He finally asked because his heart wouldn’t give enough energy to his brain to figure it out.

Felix turned his head, looked him in the eye and the rest of the conversation, the one line he had said to the Sylvain in his mind struck the Sylvain holding his hand.

He thought the words at the same time Felix said them.

“I love you.” Sylvain didn’t, however, think the derisive “Obviously” that Felix tacked onto the end.

Didn’t really think at all.

He just leaned in and kissed him. 

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, yo, I'm still looking for a general 3H discord. I've made one myself because that's the kind of person I am. PM me for a link or to send me a link!


End file.
